As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East.

But for me, the money quote is here:

The enemy in Afghanistan is "adaptive" and "very smart," Freakley said. One tactic they have used lately to counter U.S. dominance in the air is to withdraw, when fighting, into compounds where civilians are located, which has resulted in civilian deaths in two sets of airstrikes near Kandahar.

That’s asymmetric warfare. Although some asymmetric wars can be won, they cannot be won without the support of local populations. The people of India kicked the British Empire’s asses out, even if the British did win the key battle depicted in the film Gunga Din, notably, through the assistance of a local collaborator (depicted in racist tones as a doggedly loyal turbaned lackey).

The U. S. cannot win its current fight against terrorist cells operating within civilian populations militarily, and yet the entire Bushco foreign policy is staked on the notion that it can. Stock market bubbles burst. The idea that America’s current strategy can win is a bubble. Start selling short. Remember, there is no actual "war on terror."

Karl Rove wants to squeak out one more election cycle victory using the false "War on Terror" before the bubble bursts, but I doubt events will be kind to him. Americans are catching on. Sadly, Democrats as a whole lack the spittle to call this bullshit for what it is, nervously scanning the polls to find the American people are catching on, yet not at all clear about the magnitude of our folly or what to do next. So be it. It’s left to us to lead and tell the truth.

2500 is not just a number. More ominously, our real enemies are growing stronger while we pour away our blood and treasure in Bin Laden’s international recruiting and training program (Iraq, Afghanistan). Osama does not need a new base camp: he can train his people against our sons and daughters while we finance the whole thing. What could be better for Al Qaeda? What’s more, the supremacist, "clash of civilizations" mindset underpinning our policies proves to people around the world we really are at war with Islam. Bush could not have failed more if he had selected Osama to design his foreign policy, instead of Deadeye Dick Cheney.

The mythology of the British Empire, the subject of Rudyard Kipling’s poem "Gunga Din," was founded on racist fantasies of a white man’s burden. So too, the "War on Terror," clash of civilizations crowd believes Western Whitey must subjugate the Barbarian Brown Moslem Horde through force and conversion to (Christianist) democracy (see also American conservative racism on display in the right’s obsession with brown people crossing our southern border).

But Bushco cannot win people over to democracy, because democracy by its nature requires persuasion, not B-1 bombers. Like Gandhi, we in the grass roots know all too well that promoting democracy requires inspiration, not subjugation. The torture-tainted reign of Buscho and the Republican party has forfeited its ability to inspire internationally. There can be no return to true American strength until Democrats take over, call bullshit on our current policy and proceed to set our own moral and economic house in order. The only positive future for America is a progressive future.

The "War on Terror" crowd likes to bring up Japan as an exception, so let’s address that. Japan was a defeated state, a wannabe empire, isolated internationally. There were no Japanese people outside of Japan to come to Japan’s aid. It was surrounded by enemies. We had a huge ratio of conquering forces on the ground relative to total population size, something we cannot begin ever to match in Iraq (we had the same in Germany, which had a history of democracy on which to draw as it rebuilt its society). Japanese society was a homogeneous one accustomed to top-down social and political organization. These conditions made it possible to enact the visionary, Democrat-designed Marshall Plan for rebuilding and recovery, but we have abandoned any rebuilding in Iraq, because the people of Iraq won’t accept anything we attempt to do. They want to build their societies themselves.

Iraq is a heterogeneous, sectarian powder keg formed as a state arbitrarily by colonialist forces. Its ethnic diversity and ethnic and religious allies within the region give each internal faction natural allies uninterested in a unified, diversified Iraqi state. No one in the neighborhood wants Iraq to become a model for democracy or harmonious pluralism. We cannot begin to approach the number of boots on the ground required to sustain order the way we did in Japan.

Every civilian we kill recruits many more enemies. The Japan example is an historical exception, not applicable to Iraq. The better parallel is to India, and India did not survive British rule as a unified state. Iraq is even more riven by sectarian division than India was. The only question about our Iraq policy is how long we will insist on weakening our military before accepting these blunt, expensive, deadly realities.

Make no mistake: the bubble is already bursting, though our establishment media and certainly our government officials are the last ones to accept this truth. There’s a great opening for Democrats to begin to tell the American people the truth, though I understand their reluctance: the first truth tellers will be blamed and savaged for telling us what many people do not want to hear. That work, therefore, falls to us progressive patriots. As ever, citizen patriots must step up to lead, because we love America and the values that have always made us strong.

200 Responses
to “Bursting the Bubble of American Military Empire”

I notice the WP, NY Times, etc are trying to ignore the new violence in Iraq. Kinda destroys their ‘Bush on a roll’ meme, I guess. They want to write that Bush is having a comeback so badly, they are willing to ignore reality.

Murtha was great on MTP btw. Loved how he went after Rove and his big, fat backside. Snort.

Great post. There is no “War on Terror”. It’s a fraud being perpetrated on America. Instead, the US is slowly but surely losing two wars of occuption in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when the curtain falls down, like it did on the USSR, it’s going to be ugly.

Karl Rove says there is, but how can you trust someone who is a TRAITOR to our national security, Karl Rove outed a covert CIA operations officer to continue his false WAR ON TERRUH.

Karl Rove is also a draft dodger, who LIED on his application for his 3rd deferment during the Vietnam War, where we lost tens of thousands of our brave national heroes. How can a draft dodger tell our Heroes like John Murtha and John Kerry how a war should be fought.

I’d agree with most of this analysis, but I’d just mention that the pre-WWII German experience with democracy was quite thin, consisting only of the very weak Weimar Republic which the Nazis had swept aside without much trouble.

Pach’s main point, that we are extremely unlikely to sucessfully impose a healthy western-style democracy in Iraq, is solid. Brzezinski in a recent interview called the goal of establishing a friendly democracy in Iraq a “fantasy” which is probably too nice a description.

This is the point Dems should try to absorb. As bad as things are in Iraq, they are only likely to get worse going forward. Time to come out in favor of the truth. This war was a hideous mistake, and being against it isn’t a political risk, long term. The politically risky thing is to NOT be against it. Quit temporizing and make your stand.

Pach — Accept Du’s anger. I assume it was directed at all of us, not you alone.

I suspect the primary reason that the Dems cannot articulate a story line counter to the Rove/Bush story line on Iraq is that the only true counter story is the one just articulated by Du. From that perspective, everything else is just illusion, and political opportunism.

The picture he paints is one that most Americans would find profoundly offensive, not just at a personal level but also from one’s sense of national indentity. It just defies human nature to accept such a self portrait, even in abstract terms; it’s hard to accept that everything you’ve been taught and assumed to be true about Americans, America’s role in the world, and what others must think of us is just fundamentally upside down. Indeed, how could any nation accept such a critique, internalize it, and begin to comprehend its ethical implications without suffering from a complete pyschological breakdown? It’s like being told that every thing you believe is, in essence, pathologically criminal.

I’m certain that much could be said to show that his view is only half the story, the worst half, and there is much good from which to build. That is my hope. But the problem that America faces, and that we pose to the world, is that there is no peaceable model for how a nation faces itself and finally sees itself as others see it. It took a total and crushing military defeat for the Germans, for example, to begin to realize that the image many had of themselves, that justified their wars and that accepted or ignored the holocaust, was fundamentally evil, and that they, like all of us, have a dark side that is capable of such horrors, especially if we allow ourselves to be led by unscrupulous demogogues. America is almost there now, and collectively we are as blind as they were then.

The “debate” in Congress this week is a clear sign that this country is not yet capable of self perception in any meaningful sense. And there are no leaders, in any party, and any forum, or any media (with the possible exception of a few blogs) who appear to be capable of holding up an accurate mirror.

I fear we are in for a long, dark period, and so far, I see little that will lead us toward a new enlightenment. In meantime, each us has to be a small candle, and we should watch for each other.

Thanks to Du for caring enough to hold up this mirror, and I hope he will one day come to forgive us, and that we earn it.

the first truth tellers will be blamed and savaged for telling us what many people do not want to hear.

In fact, demonization is pretty much all they have, or have ever had going for them. It’s why their policy is such a miserable failure–because (unlike criminal profilers, who actually catch psychopathic killers) they have no idea what makes our enemies tick or what makes them attractive to others who aren’t fully in agreement, but will support those enemies if we drive them to it. Demonization is utterly incapable of producing an effective foreign policy. But it damn sure can scare the spineless wonders of Versailles.

So, really, the fight is up to us. The Versailles Dems are not our allies, and it’s pure foolishness waiting for them to act like what they are not. We need to break the back of demonizaiton ourselves. No one else is going to do it for us.

Ann Coulter = Karl Rove = George Bush = Your Local GOP Rep

They are all one beast. The have had all the time in the world to get their house in order. And this is the order they have chosen.

Good point about Japan and Germany, Pachacutec, but you forgot to mention one other thing that made Japan easier to occupy – the Allies had killed many of their military age men and destroyed many of their cities. Thanks to the established order in Japanese society, when they were defeated they were defeated as a society. In Iraq, we only defeated the army and Saddam. We didn’t get any of the psychological benefit of defeating a society, and Iraq, like most middle eastern countries, has a very young population.

Psycologically, my guess is they’re not a defeated people, and as with any society where the young predominate, they would be somewhat troublesome no matter who was in charge.

Not a few Americans feel our flag should be flying over Mecca. I understand because of this, coupled with our illegal invasion of a sovereign country all Americans are stained. Presidentially authorized torture, use of mercenaries and the recruiting of terrorists (MEK) to destabilize Iran are what America represents.

We won’t win in either Iraq or Afghanistan, because the solutions are not military but Bush government can only respond militarily. America, as a country, is blinded by our immense military power. Too bad we’ve gotten ourselves into wars that aren’t about firepower. Along the lines of Rumsfeld’s reported comment about making the rubble bounce in Afghanistan, we can’t bomb or shell our way out of these disasters.

Recent-history examples of how and why we’re going to lose in both places (unless radical policy changes are made) include the Soviet loss in Afghanistan, our loss in Vietnam, the French loss in Vietnam and the Finnish defeat of the Soviets in the Winter War of 1939-1940. It was the Finns, by the way, that brought the world the Molotov Cocktail, named after the Soviet general who led the invasion of Finland. How’s that for a legacy of asymmetrical warfare?

Oilfieldguy — yes, “Vietnam is a jungle.” That did not stop us from trying to turn its jungles into deserts, by using agent orange and other defoliants, not to mention the 25-ft deep, 50 ft wide pockmarks left by the B-52 carpet bombings. I walked through these man-created “deserts” and the only difference was the stifling humidity.

Oilfieldguy @ 11:47 am (#18) – Yes, we really are becoming too intellectual as a society. Some of us go and look at maps before we make those kinds of statements. Iraq is swampy in the south and mountainous in the north. It used to be a lot swampier, in fact, before Saddam blocked off the water.

Here’s a tip for such conversations next time. You can agree by observing that the Vietcong wore pajamas and the Ayrabs wear towels on their heads – completely different.

I admit this is copied/pasted out of another site. (actually, how I got pointed here) — informative…
…”the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, opened its annual conference on international strategy with a speech from the Navy Secretary in a vast hall, followed by a panel on American power composed of three scholars, all of whom had opposed the war in Iraq. Indeed, in the biographical notes that were given out to the audience of officers%u2014men and women wearing their dress whites%u2014one of the scholars stated bluntly that he had written about the “folly of invading Iraq.”

For an hour the panelists gave their reasons for why they believe America will remain the most powerful country in the world well into this century, regardless of the morass in Iraq. There were about ten questions. The last one was from a Navy commander named Cladgett from Syracuse, who rose in the middle of the audience.

“My question to the panel is, What is the path to success in Iraq?”

There was a damburst of laughter in the audience, then the scholars took it on, one by one. The first, Stephen Walt of Harvard, said “This was a huge strategic blunder, there are no attractive plans forward.” The greatest danger%u2014an international conflict in Iraq%u2014would be there no matter when we left. The next man, Robert Art of Brandeis, said, he thought it was extremely important for America’s image in the Arab world not to have permanent bases in Iraq.

The last one to speak was the one who had used the word “folly” in the program: John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is 58. He told the audience that when he was a teenager, he had enlisted in the Army. Then he’d spent 1966-1970 at West Point. Then he said this:

I remember once in English class we read Albert Camus’s book The Plague. I didn’t know what The Plague was about or why we were reading it. But afterwards the instructor explained to us that The Plague was being read because of the Vietnam War. What Camus was saying in The Plague was that the plague came and went of its own accord. All sorts of minions ran around trying to deal with the plague, and they operated under the illusion that they could affect the plague one way or another. But the plague operated on its own schedule. That is what we were told was going on in Vietnam. Every time I look at the situation in Iraq today, I think of Vietnam, and I think of The Plague, and I just don’t think there’s very much we can do at this point. It is just out of our hands. There are forces that we don’t have control over that are at play, and will determine the outcome of this one. I understand that’s very hard for Americans to understand, because Americans believe that they can shape the world in their interests.
But I learned during the Vietnam years when I was a kid at West Point, that there are some things in the world that you just don’t control, and I think that’s where we’re at in Iraq.

The panel was over. For a moment or two there was stunned silence, and then applause%u2014at once polite, sustained and thunderous.”
—–http://mondoweiss.observer.com…..lague.html
apologies if it repeats any other previously posted. was outta the lake for a bit.

The way I explain the situation in Iraq is a lot like my oldest son growing from a teenager to an adult. My ex was a super controller type and we divorced when my son was 17. He went form controlling every aspect to his life to what he considered none, so he went into a “girls gone wild” stage. Eventually something occured, the 2×4 of the law hit him upside the head and knocked him into adulthood. Now he is a great Dad with two young girls and a great marriage.

Iraq was controlled by Saddam, super control freek, then the US invades and there is a preception (or reality) of no control. It is “girls gone wild” but where is the 2×4?

The problem is that the USA blew it when there was the chance to gain control and exercise disipline. Was it intential so that the “Big Rip Off” could occur or was it just BushCo Think Tank kids running a country when then did not know how to balance their own checkbooks?

So it is the same decision when you have that older car. Do you keep pouring money to keep the beater going or do you suck it up and buy a new one?

Murtha is right, it is stay and pay…. or learn from our lessons and make an exit stage left?

The administration, in response to court rulings, was forced to make some kind of determination – that was supposed to be based on some evidence and hearing/tribunal of some kind – of whether they had misidentified detainees as enemy combatants. The detainees were not allowed to have a lawyer and as a result probably didn’t even understand what the significance of participating or not participating might be. The story talks about, not the current handful (10 or so??) of hearings that were supposed to be going on now, but rather about “Combatant Status REview” tribunals from earlier and how detainee’s requests for exculpatory witnesses and statements were handled.

They give several examples of the kinds of people our military said they “could not find” and they also to take one of the detainees who was told none of 4 his witnesses could be located and, in a matter of days, they proceed to locate the three living witnesses and get the information for the 4th dead witness.

Well researched, investigated, and to the point story.

In one case, the State Department said that it could not locate Ismail Khan , the well-known minister of energy in Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s cabinet, who meets frequently with American diplomats.
In another case, tribunal officials said they could not contact a prisoner in US custody in Bagram, Afghanistan, because the US officials holding him failed to respond to their inquiries.

One of the witnesses that they found for their test case detainee – a man no one in our administration could find – former Afghan Interior Minister Ahmed Ali Jalali

How did the Globe reporters find him? . . . with one call to the Interior Ministry. And they also mention that little known, ultra secret investigative tool – Google. A quick Google search would have also located him: He is in Washington, D.C., teaching at the National Defense University

“The _______ are opportunists,” said John Stuart Blackton, a retired U.S. diplomat who consults on Afghan issues with the National Intelligence Council, which produces government intelligence forecasts. “They have no deep ideology and no deep theory that informs what they are doing. . . . In other words, they are better understood as being like a crime family in New Jersey.”

I posted a comment that vanished. It referred to an attack made on Jane, CHS, and indeed all FDLer “flying monkeys”. I identified the blogger, who has been banned from this site and others. Maybe the moderator does not want to give this blogger any traffic. I feel it deserves some response.

~~OFG- I did delete the posts- I made that call bec. I thought it would just give that person extra attention. Long history. Started at FDL by attacking JH and CHS for FDL not posting on Jill Carroll (FDL had) and eventually being very abusive. But the person’s own blog spot actually had NO practical suggestions as to how to apply pressure for her release- just ranting. Folks at FDL actually gave a lot of practical suggestions, by contrast. But the abuse just kept coming. Anyway, judgement call here-hope you understand. A moderator~~

I’d like to believe there was more substance to the “debate” in the House than was reported in the MSM. Something that would confirm Pach’s view that the “bubble is bursting” for at least some. I was out of country till Friday; was there good coverage of substantive issues, with hints of a counter-view, anywhere, outside of C-SPAN? I saw only the brief references to Pelosi and Murtha.

you do not spend billions buidling bases so large they come w/car dealerships and Burger Kings – unless you plaN t/b an occupying force for a long, long time

Preachin’ to the choir I know, but

The GWOT meme has been successful in covering up so much b/c of the W in GWOT – Americans like to ‘win’ their wars – and the Dems aren’t saying shit b/c they can’t figure out how to get out of the ‘wants to lose’ corner they’ve been painted in

Am I a simp to believe that calling it an Occupation could get them out of the corner and give our fellow Americans (less the 20%) ‘permission” to get excised over the day to day tragedy ?

This is a tough read, but in view of scarecro*’s post referencing the difficulty America has in looking inward, I thought it appropriate. It is well worth reading the entire article, imho.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

With the sun finally preparing to set on the British Empire, the days of conquest and expansion dawned for the nascent American Empire. Pathologically hubristic notions like Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism served to dehumanize indigenous people to justify invasion, theft and murder as acts of necessity to bring civilization to “primitives”.

(snip)

The Bush Regime’s launch of the Project for the New American Century with the invasion of Iraq was not really out of character for the United States. While it was certainly executed with more blatant disregard for international law than America’s previous imperial endeavors, it typifies the American sanctimonious belief that it can do no wrong.

George Bush was simply reiterating America’s long-standing mendacious rationale for its exploitative behavior when he stated:

“What I’m trying to suggest to you that this program is a part of a strategic goal, and that is to protect this country in the short-term and protect it in the long-term by spreading freedom.”

Consider some of the freedoms the United States is spreading:

1. Freedom to work under miserable conditions for a pittance.

2. Freedom to exist in an environment permeated with depleted uranium.

If that’s how you see it pach, I will desist. I am a pugilist by nature, and defending the honor of Ms. Hamsher, who is caring for her ill mother rates a cheater-pipe shampoo in my book. However, I am more part-time here than most others. I will hold off on this fight until someone says sick’em.

Great link and excerpt. “I understand that’s very hard for Americans to understand, because Americans believe that they can shape the world in their interests” partly (in a cleaned up sanitized no-war crimes version) du’s point from below.

Wingnuts come here and throw bombs and get disruptive so we have a moderator to filter stuff. Sometimes it works good and sometimes not so much. For instance if I were to start calling you a bunch of hateful names, i would get one warning. There is no second. We try to stay civilized. That does not stop being criticized though, if it is done about reasoning, not, for instance, excessively long nosehairs.

Can anyone explain something I’ve often wondered about: why, though email is usually delivered within seconds, sometimes it takes hours? Last night I had dinner with a golf buddy and asked what our Tuesday tee-time will be. She said, “lotus, 1:30! I emailed you that this morning!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

Well, she had — but I couldn’t know that because it never got here until probably just about the same time as our conversation — 7:34 PM.

No moderator comment. I refreshed the page thinking that would help, it prolly wiped the mod com.

CHS

I thought it was something like that. My insticts were right then not to disclose how I came to that blog. Hopefully the directions I gave you were sufficient. Also VG, you were mentioned. That’s a trifecta fuckup in my book.

back to the topic: it looks like the Islamicists in Somalia are defeating the new US Allies in Freedom: the traditional warlords. What is the Preznit going to do about this? What can he do about it? What should he do about it?

katymine @ 12:49 pm (#75) – To me, that document was chilling from end to end. Not so much for what it said, because I think most of us could have guessed that much of what it said was true based on what we read and see on the tube, but for the fact that a U.S. diplomat was writing this, and that no one in the Bush Administration acknowledges that this stuff is going on.

My guess is that someone in the foreign service leaked it to the press, but who knows? It might even have been one of Karl Rove’s or Dick Cheney’s enemies.

Not there. I refreshed the page. It removes the pink ban and probably the moderator comments. No biggie. Just got a return email from CHS who confirmed my suspicions. No publicity for the shock schlock. No sense in polluting an extremely reputable bloggers comments with the vile invective I can unleash on this hack. I’ll just whimper like a dog who wants to hunt, but the master just cleaned his gun and put it up.

*ilson at 112:58 — I’d like some credible analysis of who the good/bad guys are in Somalia. A couple nights after the take over of the capitol, Nightly news had on two analysts, whose names I didn’t recognize. The moderator asked “how bad is this,” and to here surprise, both guests said, “this is good.” We’ve been backing the wrong people, and there is some hope the Islamists will improve things. Is this true? And whom do we trust to sort this out? Because the Administration, whom I do not trust, and the MSM who gets its views from the same source, all claim/assume that the Islamists are “terrorists” whereas the “warlords” all believe in the march of freedom. I haven’t a clue.

Oilfieldguy @ 1:02 pm (#86) – One thing I’ve noticed is that if you’re using the “Refresh Comments” button, you’ll miss comments that are let out of moderation jail after you first loaded the page. The only way to get them is to reload the page using your browser’s reload button.

katymine,
Thanks for that Mad Max image, ugh. Unfortunately, way to close to the truth.

At YKos we saw the video of I think it was the War Diaries (?), video taken by 3 guys on the ground with their commentary. One of the haunting images was the “vehicle graveyard” burnt and bombed out vehicles as far as the eye could see all collected in one huge lot. The audio commentary which still stays with me as they closed in on one steel carcass after another, “Each of these vehicles has a story.” Seeing the wreckage of the steel, it is beyond imaginable to think of the people who were in them at the time of their “demise.”

The total wreckage is incalculable. Soldiers, civilians, infrastructure, antiquities, the US budget, the survivors with PTSD. We are going to be paying for this for the rest of our lives and our childrens’ lives and beyond.

scarecro* : the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan was precisely that they curbed the “excesses” of the warlords and brought a certain stability and peace. Is this pattern being repeated in Somalia?

egregious – I am a correspondent of both and would suggest that the “ill feelings” are not the issue. Both Du and mark put their own lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have lost dear friends there and Du has just returned for a short break from his service in Afghanistan. While we debate the policies and politics of america, they live with the on-the-ground repercussions and are rightly disgusted with our lack of recognition of the real situation.

Take a look at today’s post on gorillasguides (link in my sig) and read the linked articles about the conditions in Iraqi hospitals, the children being killed as they search the dump for a scrap to eat, the child held hostage at gunpoint by an american soldier, the wounded and dying turned away from iraqi hospitals with no room and no ability to aid the suffering.

We never intended a “democratic” iraq – we are not honorable – and we will not be saved by democrats who even now will not own up to the horrors we have inflicted on the people of afghanistan and iraq. It was under these same democrats that we murdered between 250,000 and 500,000 iraqi children and albright said “the price is worth it.”

Until we face the reality of Iraq and Afghanistan and the brutalities that our soldiers commit in our name funded by our taxes in what OFG so wisely points out is an occupation, Du and mark are quite right to call us on it … and to be disgusted.

scarecro* @ 1:05 pm (#91) – I saw those guys on The NewsHour, too (your correction noted). I hadn’t heard much about the situation in Somalia recently, other than that it was total chaos dominated by the warlords. Hadn’t even heard that there was a serious Islamist faction in the country. So I was just a little surprised at this turn of events, to say the least.

Siun, thanks, just trying to differentiate between their anger toward our nation and their anger at our blog. Comments about bounced emails and how we responded to their posts, those I think we should try to address so that they will feel we respect them as people.

They are writing about desperate circumstances. We are trying to understand their perspective and take action. If they think we don’t treat them properly they won’t want to participate, to our great disadvantage.

Upon personal review, perhaps this is another case of a reasonably astute (if occasionally conflicted) progressive intellect sabotaged by the subjectively held ego.

Everyone, at times, desires to be the prettiest star…To bask in the frenzied adulation of netizens far and wide, the cyberhuzzahs for one’s cogent insights and clever bon mots blazing loudly in one’s own eyes. But, as in real life, ‘many are called but few are chosen’, and we don’t all run on another’s fast-tracked timetable for fame, but our own turtle-paced one.
To accept this is wisdom, to reject it is denial.

It has always perplexed me that there are hurt feelings and resentment transmogrified into gratuitous ad hominem, simply because one is told to get off of another’s soapbox and mount their own, an act as easy as breathing (or defecating, if one prefers an less palatable metaphor).
Whatever else blogging is, should or can be, it should not about adopting the lust for self-aggrandizement that the pundit class supplanted their ethical structures with.

In Fog of War, Robert McNamara asks the question — was it right of America to burn 100,000 Japanese men women and children to death in a single night’s firebombing of Tokyo? Was it right to burn to death hundreds of thousands more Japanese civilians in other cities? And all of this before the atomic bombs that ended the war.

Meanwhile, the monsters in the White House are just itching for a chance to nuke Iran.

Talcot — Du is short for a respected commenter from the prior thread, a peacekeeper in Afghanistan. He and his father, another peacekeeper, called markfromireland sometimes comment here, and have their own blogs, on conditions in Iraq and Afghan- See Siun’s comment at #100 here, for more background.

Christy, when y’all at headquarters are back in normal mode, I’m thinking we prolly could use another “FDL Orientation Thread” like we had a month or so ago. Lotsa new peeps wanting to know what “EPU’d” and other vocab features mean. It’ll keep for a few days or weeks, though.

Talcott, “du” is short for “Dubhaltach,” screen-name of “markfromireland”’s son.

“EPU(’d)” stands for “Evil Parallel Universe,” another commenter who often posted a comment so late in a thread that, by that time, another thread had started “upstairs,” leaving poor EPU behind in the basement . . . after it happened to him enough, the phenomenon was named in his honor.

I believe that most people suspect something is wrong in this country, but don’t want to believe it and really don’t know what to do about it. I have met two people in the last week who have articulated that to me, and they were people whose political views I was unfamiliar with until THEY brought it up in conversation.

We all need a bumpersticker that says something simple, like, “There is no war on terror,” or “Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither,” or some simple message. If we could think of message, and we all got the bumpersticker and encouraged our friends to get it, I think, with enough stickers out there, people might possibly start getting the message.

As I have before, I would recommend – and wish I could require for all americans – a reading of Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization. For example, a reading of his description of the events on the ground at the beginning of our war on afghanistan rather changes the picture presented in today’s WaPo article. Our fighters have been decimating civilian villages in Afghanistan since the first attack … we just don’t normally read about that in our media. Or read Fisk’s accounts of 91 and the repercussions of depleted uranium for the children of iraq – and the sanctions which blocked shipment of essential medicines for those children.

I do not know how to stop these atrocities but I do know that we are at minimum responsible to bear true witness – and to acknowledge the evil.

Well put, your ’sour grapes’ post. Funny how many seek the bright lights with no idea how hot dem mutherfuckers are. I’ve been very fortunate to have sampled many different aspects of these things you write of. Now, I enjoy a good cup of coffe with the sunrise everyday–I’m six feet ahead in the game of life.

I think we should spread the news about this event. I also plan to ask the newspaper how to contribute to his legal defense fund. You might want to as well?

Officer at Fort Lewis calls Iraq war illegal, refuses order to go
By Hal Bernton

Seattle Times staff reporter

In a rare case of officer dissent, a Fort Lewis Army lieutenant has refused orders to head out to Iraq this month to lead troops in what he believes is an illegal war of occupation.

1st Lt. Ehren Watada was scheduled to make his first deployment to Iraq this month. His refusal to accompany the Stryker brigade troops puts him at risk of court martial and years of prison time.

“I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration,” Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. “It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war.”

In a statement released today, Watada said the “war in Iraq violates our democratic system of checks and balances.

“It usurps international treaties and conventions that by virtue of the Constitution become American law. The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice, but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes.”

Afternoon. A few thoughts:
1. Now, I want to give proper credit, but there’s someone with 3 initials…cbk?…clr?…nuts…something like that. Anyways, THAT person raises the idea of calling Iraq an OCCUPATION. He/she cites an article which explains it further. Well…I am IN.
Calling it an OCCUPATION is much better, and pretty damn accurate! “End The Occupation” has a good ring to it. “We Won The War, Now Let’s End The Occupation” might be good as well.

2. And, I think what Pach and others write about, is an effort to properly “identify” the war on terror. “Terrorism” is, if you will, a subset of guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare is a type of battlefield tactic. Terrorism, or terrorist actions, are a form of guerilla warfare which includes components of targeting civilians and the suicider aspect. “True” guerilla warfare is a tactic mainly used against military targets, and of the hit-and-run flavor. (hit convoys, small patrols, then run like hell) I “think” this is what Pach is saying. But I may be wrong!

3. And, I think wilson is on to something with his “time and temperature” readings from Iraq. It’s short, simple, and conveys the message of the mess over there. Wish this could somehow make its way into the main media.

egregious at 115 — look, I know that tempers are running high around the issue of Iraq — they should, things are awful there at the moment, and Afghanistan is going to hell in a handbasket as well. But Du and Mark are big boys and they will work through this however they work through it. We sometimes disagree here, and I’m not going to delete comments that are just disagreement unless and until something starts getting out of hand. Both Mark and Du know how to get in touch with me if there is a problem — and if someone else needs me, I’m at ReddHedd at AOL dot COM. (Although, frankly, if everyone could take a deep breath and please remember that I’m flying solo since Jane is dealing with a family crisis, it would be much appreciated by me.)

Gang, I spoke to Jane a short time ago. Things do not look good for her mother. Any thoughts or prayers you could send to Jane’s mom, to Jane and her family would be very much appreciated. Thanks. (I’ll update when I hear anything further.)

About the bogus congressional debate on Iraq–who preps these asshats?? Constant linking to 9/11 and GWOT was outrageous. Why didn’t someone stand up and say how deeply disturbed they are to hear these people calling President Bush a liar. He said there was no linkage to 9/11 as did the 9/11 commision found no credible evidence of linkage. Iraq was not a threat, had no WMD, did not attack us and on behalf of President Bush please stop calling him a liar.

Bunch a democrat wussies. It’s just to easy to see through the fog. Use there words as a blunt instrument.

‘Sokay, Christy, you’re right about Mark and Du, and besides, they don’t seem to be angry at us per se so much as they’re angry at the government running amok in our name. Frustrated to their wits’ end, and no wonder.

Hope you went to the store for apple custard pecan- and tomato-pie fixin’s, so we’ll try to leave you world anough and time for enjoying them. Btw, I see that now we’ve got TWO tomato pie recipes to savor — imm’s and Priscilla, Queen of the Beach’s. Truly an embarrassment of riches.

Christy – I’ve been lurking all today, not wanting to add to the fever pitch of sentiments since Du’s posts in last thread. I’m glad you’re not censoring people from posting their responses. Disagreement is healthy, and if we start disallowing folks who disagree than we are in deep shit, acting as hypocrites in regards to our protests against the Bushies for their cenosrship of their critics.

And I think you’re doing an absolutely amazing job of holding down the fort! You give us the consistency we need. Truly sorry to hear about the turn of events with Jane’s Mom. I’ve been there, and years later it still hurts to think about it. Best to all my fellow firepups on this Father’s Day. All the families we belong to help to keep us in one piece, in the day-to-day.

There are several Deputy Dawg moderators who are busy behind the curtains trying to maintain a modicum of civility and decency here. These black-costumed stagehands will just be a little busier for a while…

There is no “war on terror.” There is an appropriate effort to protect us from terrorists (much of it being done incompetently under the current administration, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t something real that governments should be doing.) The entire purpose of calling it a “war” is to conflate whatever military action they feel like taking with 9/11, to declare (falsely) that military action is the only appropriate way to fight terrorism, and to demonize those who oppose any of these things as being against fighting terrorism.

Republicans work endlessly to undermine the law enforcement work that effectively protects us against terrorism in favor of the military action and undermining of our rights that doesn’t. They don’t care about fighting terrorism, only about scaring us and enhancing their own power. Just as Abramoff was only a “lobbyist” when it happened to coincide with his efforts to subsidize Republicans, the administration only effectively fights terrorism when it happens to coincide with their real objective, amassing more power.

There is no War on Terror. When every enemy we fight is labeled “the terrorists,” the real fight has already been lost.

I remember when the MSM had balls. It wasn’t too long ago……they had a big daddy fancy set of balls when they were sitting high up in their catbird seats hypnotizing the public with their “terror watch” programming and enlisting the help of evening guests who arrive alive at five and agree that there can be no debate when national security is at stake and damn them liberals, followed by a brass set of balls that it takes to send other folks sons & daughters to perhaps die, for a big hit on their almighty Nielson Diebold Meter Machine.

I believe that Democracy is very near……..and it will be followed by street parades; candy and gleeful soldiers and civilians lining the avenues from uptown to downtown, east to west and north to south, across our borders and over the oceans…we are all just waiting for the MSM to grow a patriotic set of balls in which to use to begin headlining the impeachment debate. Impeachment=Peace

Justa reminder to everyone — book club is coming up next. We’re discussing Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs with Peter Daou as today’s discussion host. It’s going to be a great one, and I hope everyone can join us.

As always, please try to keep the book club thread for book club discussions only. All other discussion should continue in this thread. Just FYI. Thanks!

Christy and gang, OT, but I was wondering if you’d had the same thought about this week’s Supreme Court decision that I did. They basically decided that no-knock searches are still against the rules, but the evidence won’t be disallowed if you violate those rules.

Are they moving toward allowing other illegally obtained evidence (like, say, interrogations under torture), to solve the problem that you’ve noted many times, that they now have made it impossible to try many of the suspects at Guantanamo and elsewhere, because of tainted evidence?

I am not happy with the state of our country that I now think of these things…

I really do believe without impeachment there will be no reconcilliation with the world. Impeachment won’t happen for so many reasons, but if we don’t show other countries we’re serious about our rejection of war crimes and imperialism and lack of respect for environmental treaties and everything else this administration represents, well, we’re sunk for decades. Even if a democrat is elected in 2008. There’s just too much to clean up. sigh.

with the demise of the USSR, the military-industrial complex yearned for a suitable new “enemy” that could justify its continued profit-flow. The Global War on Terrorism is just about perfect: open-ended and amorphous. As long as the citizenry is scared and fearful, the spending on ‘defense’ continues unabated…

Looks like the cabal representing “We the people…” is batting 1 for 3 in Iraq while “the others” seem to be 3 for 3…

“…It is also important to note that Boyd divided warfare into three distinct elements:

* Moral Warfare: the destruction of the enemy’s will to win, via alienation from allies (or potential allies) and internal fragmentation. Ideally resulting in the “dissolution of the moral bonds that permit an organic whole [organization] to exist.” (I.e., breaking down the mutual trust and common outlook mentioned in the paragraph above.)

* Mental Warfare: the distortion of the enemy’s perception of reality through disinformation, ambiguous posturing, and/or severing of the communication/information infrastructure.

* Physical Warfare: the destruction of the enemy’s physical resources such as weapons, people, and logistical assets…”

“There was a man who was so disturbed by the sight of his own shadow and was so displeased with his own footsteps that he determined to get rid of both. The method he hit upon was to run away from them.

So he got up and ran. But every time he put his foot down there was another step, while his shadow kept up with him without the slightest difficulty.

He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough. So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead.

He failed to realize that if he merely stepped into the shade his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed still, there would be no footsteps.”

CHS, me too. Thanks for all you do here. My mom and my sister and my brother are all bricktops. I’m a potato(e) eatin’ Irishman always lookin’ for a good drink a good fight a good story a good fight and a good woman, not necessarily in that order.

Thanks for not jumping over the dinner table and slapping the shit out of me when I asked if there was any chance Schumer could be right. Your answer and the first three pages of CtG educated me. I guess the question now is, how could he be so wrong? And how do we educate him? At the polls with Ned? Will he get a clue? Answer another time. It’s too far OT.

Hugs and hope to Jane and her mother. It’s not easy having a far-away parent who is ill.

Re: this thread – as several people alluded to, anyone who knows the rudiments of the history of Afghanistan should have known that this is the way a new occupation would go. If Afghans seem to be losing, they lie low for awhile, and then when the supposed conquerors are comfortable, wham! they come surging back again.
Bush’s soul-mate Putin could have told him this; it’s exactly what happened to the Russians. You don’t even have to go back to the Raj to see the pattern. Sigh. It pains me to think what could have been done for the women of Afghanistan had the idiots in charge not pulled out for their phony reprisal war in Iraq.
I’m preparing to fly out to Baltimore tomorrow to visit my own elderly mother – she needs help with some tasks, but at least right now she’s not ill. I feel for Jane. She’s not much into computers (lol, understatement indeed), so I’ll be deprived of FDL and my other daily blog reading for nearly a week. Can’t imagine it! How far behind will I be? Every single day I learn something I would not have known here or on Kos or Digby or Glenn Greenwald or…well, you know. Keep fighting, firedoggies.

I just found out that my mother’s last sibling, her sister died yesterday. She was the one who went to bat for my mother when my grandfather wanted my mother to be a teacher and my mother wanted to be a nurse.

Since my mother met my father at the hospital she was training at, her life could have turned out very differently and you all would be talking to someone else named Bionic (Cause it’s such a good name someone would want it!).

I’m in major get-ready mode as I will be accompanying my mother to England for the funeral next Monday. I expect this will be the last time my mum will go back, so it will be an important if short trip.

Accepting for the moment, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, and that for years Iraq was nurtured by the U.S. with money, military hardware and advisors, then just who are the terrorists in Iraq? Them or us? I mean it is we who invaded, and are occupying Iraq. Not the other way ’round.

Pach: North Korea is now reportedly fueling a missile capable of reaching the U. S.

If this is true, it only dramatizes how much weaker we are as a nation because of the folly of invading and occupying Iraq.

I remain convinced that the main reason the Bush Administration refused to negotiate with NK for four years is that they wanted a threat to justify their missile defense boondoggle. The current threat may or may not be real, but if it is, they have once again made us less safe for their own political benefit.

we don’t have to accept for a moment that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That is a fact. The 9/11 commission investigated it and found “no credible evidence” of 9/11 linkage. Dumya, Darth Cheney and Ronald Dumsfeld have all admitted that there was no connection. Further, they are now saying they never said there was a connection. Unfortunately we have all this videotape and shit. BTW, are you in Oklahoma? I live in OKC.

katymine – just curious: does placing a bowl of ice in front of a fan really work to cool the air? I tried it last summer on an especially hot day, and it didn’t seem to have much effect. That’s what we resort to without AC.

“May you add what?” Just that I like what you say, and that it’s good to know there are Oklahomans out there (other than myself) who know the score, and are ready to kick ass on our hobby-horse, drug store, cowboy booty boy prez.

Ice in front of fan… well I need to run down to the Ice and Water store and get some ice because I used it all up.

What works is dip in the pool even if the water is “pee” warm and while still damp, stand in front of the fan. Even dragged the beagle into the pool (terrified of the diving pool) and now she is feeling a lot better.

PACH – If you haven’t seen it you should watch the 45 minute video by Robert Newman called the “History of Oil”.

It’s like drinking from a firehose. He hurls more information at you in in 45 minutes amidst his standup/stage routine. Please… PLEASE have a look. If it impact you a tenth of how it did me, I think you’ll likely write about it.

Ol’ Miss Piggy Rover is FINISHED….I never bought into the genius crap. He is just evil, and with the general public drugged and unalert, he just repeated his disgusting rhetoric over and over until they thought it was fact….Not working anymore.

“I am a two-time combat veteran in Iraq with many years of experience in peace enforcement operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. My only motivation in speaking out is our great country, our incredible military and their terrific families. I left the military after 31 years of service despite a promising career and promotion in order to speak out, to turn the lights on in a very dark room. I am honor bound to continue to do so. I have been a lifelong Republican.”

My thoughts and prayers go out to Jane and family. I’ve been reading this site a few times a day for months and I’ve come to really appreciate Jane, Christy, Pach and many others. My rare posts (like this one) are usually at the very tail end of threads but I just wanted to send my best wishes say thanks to you all.

Beautiful essay, Parachutec. The neocons drive me nuts when they cite the occupation of Japan as a benchmark example of what it takes to rule a foreign country. What they fail to acknowledge is that when Japan surrendered, the Emperor ordered the population to disarm and cooperate with the Americans which they did. This simply does not relate to the “boots on ground” debate.

While there are certainly groupings within Iraq that can correctly be termed ‘terrorist,’ I think it is a grave error to imply that all targets of US/’Coalition’ military action are also terrorists. I don’t know that Pach intends this implication, but careless use of the term is dangerous.

To define the Iraqi resistance as terrorist delegitimates what is a fully justified struggle against an illegal occupation. Labeling resistance fighters and supporters as terrorists dehumanizes them, and paves the way for the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and atrocities like Falluja and Haditha.

This is more of a ‘ what if’ story than a ‘ just so’.
What if they had the internet back in the Roman Empire?
( See Mel Brooks ,’ History of the world’ for background )
What if Caligula’s body guard who got tired of his bad craziness and stabbed him to death was put to death him or herself BUT because they had the internet ( They had the boombox remember) a ‘ virtual’ hat quickly got passed around and their family was set up for life.
What if this was ‘ profiting from crime’ but there was nothing anyone could do about it?
Just so no one gets the wrong idea I have nothing on the Chimperor at the rotten dead pool or http://www.stiffs.com and I did not have sex with that flying monkee.

Has anybody noticed how all things war related has upsurged on cable tv in just the last few years? I’m not happy that our subscription includes the military channel…if only we could pick just the channels we want. I haven’t watched the history channel or discovery..well, I just don’t remember the last time. For instance, today on hist chan is “Military Monday”. When I look at the schedules, I see war (past & present) including (I passed) “Hitler’s Women”. If it is not war, there is a lovely lineup of prison theme specials & every murder investigation or mystery in american history. I’d call it terrorist tv.

I think your article contains some errors of fact wrt the US occupation of Japan:
“We had a huge ratio of conquering forces on the ground relative to total population size” – The US & British Commonwealth forces that occupied the Japanese home islands amounted to less than 200,000 troops, a tiny %age of Japan’s population. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Commonwealth_Occupation_Force]
“conditions made it possible to enact the visionary, Democrat-designed Marshall Plan for rebuilding and recovery” – Japan received no aid from the European Recovery Act (Marshall Plan). Rather, it got GARIOA (Government Appropriations for Relief in Occupied Areas) funds, & ‘repaid’ ~25% of those funds. Total US reconstruction monies for Iraq are currently roughly double the amounts (in 2005 dollars) granted to Japan from 1945-52.[www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf]

I’m still confused about your comparison of force-levels. The ratio of occupiers to occupied in 2005 Iraq (not counting Iraqi government forces) is roughly twice that of 1946 Japan.

I’ll agree that reconstruction in Japan was more successful than it will be in Iraq. It’s a safe bet that any funds-corruption that occurred in Japan was an insignificant fraction compared to Iraq. I’m certain that President Truman would never have prevented investigations of corruption w/ some cheesy signing statement.

But I disagree w/ your statement “The mythology of the British Empire, the subject of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Gunga Din”, was founded on racist fantasies of a white man’s burden.” While Kipling was an avid imperialist, lots of his work paid tribute to non-white people & socially disadvantaged Europeans. Today, one might call him an apologist for racism – but 100 years ago, he was an irrepressible (and highly-respected) social conscious. Kinda like some bloggers!

schwa: Well, if in his day his “better man than I am, Gugda Din” was seen as progressive, it was still racist. Noble savage type “liberal” ideologies are still racist. He is after all the one who coined the term “white man’s burden” See the embedded Wikipedia link. The whole imperalistic endeaver was rationalized and given a “moral” patina by racist ideology. I can’t really see how that’s disputable.

As for the force ratios, I’ll have to go back through my old bookmarks for the source reseach I filed away somewhere. This is a tough week for me to do that as I work full time and am very busy, but I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

I just read ‘The White Man’s Burden’ for the 1st time last night. One might call its sentiments preachy & paternalistic (at best) although other epithets apply . Yet I was struck by ‘The Ballad of East and West’ (whose most-quoted line was used to reinforce social separation) – the poem actually illustrates how 2 men of warring races met & learned respectful co-existence.
I’ve long wanted to look up ‘racism’ in the OED to find the year its current meaning entered the language. I’ve always assumed it post-dates ‘imperialism’, & that the meaning of imperialism changed as racism was ‘discovered’ as a social concept (not that it didn’t already exist as a practice).
iow, pre-WWI imperialism was a high-minded social duty (profitable, too!) & racism, like the neutron, was not known to exist despite being pervasivly present.

[above social theory may be discredited, out of fashion or just plain wrong]

Kipling paid a heavy personal price for his bombastic jingoism. He pulled strings to land his reluctant 15-year-old son a position in the Irish Guards when WW1 broke out. His son was killed after a couple of weeks in the trenches. Kipling’s writings took a bitter turn and lost their blind glorification of militarism and conquest.
As Kipling went, so did Britain. It took being bled white and financially ruined by WW1 to cure Britain of most of its jingoism and imperial arrogance. WW2 took care of the rest.

I wonder what level of suffering it will take to cure the warmongering coward chickenhawks of America of their diseased illusions.